


i will always land on you like a sucker punch

by derogatory



Category: All New All Different Avengers, Marvel (Comics), New Warriors, Nova (Comics), Scarlet Spider (Comics)
Genre: Age Difference, Body Horror, Body Horror (specific to spiders), Dubious Consent, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:43:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derogatory/pseuds/derogatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing in Kaine's life has ever been unique, so there must be other superheroes (he's not a superhero, fine, superthings) who have faced a lapful of over-eager teen heroes. There has to be some kind of mantra, some method that keeps them from dropping even lower and sicker than everything else Kaine has done.</p>
<p>Yeah, probably, but asking a superhero for help sounds even more disgusting than what he wants to do to Nova.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will always land on you like a sucker punch

"I knew it," Nova declares triumphantly, arriving four hours late to the reunion. 

He skids to a stop across the still slick floors of their newly repaired Mt. Wundagore base. Rebuilding after the Inheritors' attack was extensive, and Vance said there were a few upgrades Kaine should see after Aracely settled down. The rest of the New Warriors went to bed hours ago, and Kaine figures Justice is in for a long fucking wait; the girl is still firmly latched around his waist.

"I knew that LARP-ing freak couldn't have killed you," Sam beams, quick breathing and a star bright smile. He keeps his helmet on, even around mind-readers and has-beens, hovering near them with a soft, irritating buzz.

Aracely sighs happily. "Because I told you guys so."

"She knew you were okay," Nova continues, hopping from foot to foot without touching the floor. "We wanted to go save you, but the equipment was damaged, and we didn't have a trail-"

"Yeah, I already heard the whole thing," Kaine grunts. Something about a bunch of kids saving him sat wrong. The rest of the team filled him in on the space between his death and reappearance. Apparently Jessica Drew ("The little one, you know? The clone?") said she had seen Kaine, or parts of him, two weeks ago, but he had slipped away. He doesn't remember. Kaine's bones and muscle feel fresher than two weeks. He's making a point not to think about it.

"Nobody told me you were back 'till like an hour ago," Sam says, sulky under the visor. 

"I'm not taking it personal," Kaine says dismissively, shifting his weight along the makeshift sick bed, a web of blankets and pillows to cushion a new human form. Does it still hurt? Aracely had asked after the other New Warriors dispersed, holding a pillow between her hands. Kaine blanked for a moment how she would know about what had happened on Loomworld, why she thought he needed so much gentle prodding and pillows- then wondered if she was going to smother him with them. Yeah, he'd said. You don't lie to a mindreader, and she was the one who’d set up this blanket fort triage.

He scrubs a hand across his face. "Look, the rest of the team already heard it and I'm not big on--"

"Apologies?" Aracely interrupts.

"Gratitude?" Sam smirks.

"-- _repeating_ myself," Kaine finishes, jaw clenched. "But you shouldn't have tried to take Daemos down."

Sam weighs his statement, tilting his head curiously. "That’s a weird way to say 'Sorry you got hurt, Nova.'" 

"That's not what I'm saying," Kaine snaps, pointing at him with one arm and one finger, not a multitude of legs and tarsal claws. "You didn't have to get involved. None of you did." He jostles Aracely from his arm with a sharp shake. She had started to doze off, contently tucked beside him.

"Uh, yeah we did. We're a team."

"You," he grimaces as Aracely digs her nails into his skin with a serene sleepy smile. "Aren't the savior here, all right? You should've got out of the way." Aracely murmurs 'apology accepted' and presses her face against his shoulder. "And you," he points to Nova. 

"Yeah, me?" Sam crosses his arms over his chest.

It wasn't as bad as the image of Aracely disappearing under the retaining wall; he'll take that to however many more graves his body will be dumped into. But watching Sam get picked out of the sky, dim, and crash and _stay down_ shook him, bought Daemos enough time to dislocate his shoulder. They've been in enough fights together, and Sam makes a habit of catching blows with his skull, so it shouldn't be weird. Kaine's disappointed lots of people, got them hurt or killed. Nothing about the Inheritors destroying their hideout, brutalizing people he thought he could protect, should surprise him. It doesn’t.

Kaine eyes Nova with distrust, nursing an unfamiliar sting of relief that flared up the second the kid arrived. Like he was holding his breath through the earlier reunions, waiting for Nova. That's the surprise, and Kaine has never taken to originality well.

Sam's mouth twitches, like maybe he's worried the scowl will stick if he holds it too long.

"Well?"

"You can eat shit," Kaine says and Aracely shrieks about the swear jar, and oh man! They have to start a whole new one, there were FIFTY dollars in it before! and the two kids ring off one another in excited shouts until Speedball emerges, yelling that as happy as they are all are that the prodigal spider-son returned, it is still four in the damn morning!! All right, he'll get his wallet.

  


* * *

  


Kaine instinctively tosses up his unbroken arm to cover his mouth, fangs already snaking between the torn fabric of his mask. He still only has two arms; good for looking halfway normal, bad for breaking his fall.

"You dropped me," he roars.

Nova lands alongside him, all dirty looks from what Kaine hopes he sees with only two eyes. "Uh, hello? I caught you," he argues, toeing the wreckage around them. "The only reason you fell is ‘cause you started squirming."

"Because nobody asked you to fucking catch a guy with web powers, idiot." He can feel extra limbs crowding between his bones, organs sifting and straining against them. 

"This is way more than web powers," Sam says, crouching down beside the clone. "You okay?" 

Kaine winces under his staring. "Get lost. This is gonna get ugly," he rasps. Skin is splitting open, rotting, turning up like a burn as its composition changes. It never hurts, but Kaine shivers against the shifts in his body makeup, the heat from the Nova hanging around too close.

"One time a bunch of us were playin’ with my friend Evan's step-dad's pet tarantula," Nova starts and Kaine groans, letting his head sink. Going full Man Spider is infinitely preferable to another one of the Rocket Kid's rambling stories. "And then somebody dropped it, and the spider just like, shattered when it hit the ground." He tries to tune it out, but the way Nova says 'shatter' reminds Kaine of a lot of things; the twist of his leg before it snapped, the horrified turn of Peter's mouth when they discovered the truth, _Louise_.

"Guess I didn't wanna see that happen to you."

Distant explosions puncture Kaine's touched silence. "I'm not a tarantula, genius." Not at the moment, anyway.

Nova runs his finger along a spiney thread that's clawed its way through Kaine's wrist bone. "Yeah, sure," he says wryly. Kaine bodily convulses and Sam pulls his hand back. 

"Sorry! Uh, this other time there was this HUGE spider under the sink," he's babbling. "And like, I was cool with it, but my mom killed it because she was worried about Kae-- uh. My sister."

"Why the hell do you keep talking about spiders?" His voice sounds hideous, like everything about him is going to be. It will get worse each time Kaine loses control, it will rip through his intestines and claw past his teeth and spill what's left of him over and over until the scraps are too small to piece back together. Aracely said as much in someone else's voice, and stared directly into the suns that were crashing into their reality. God, he needs to find Aracely. He needs to hurry up and be a monster since he'll never be a champion.

"Dude, I'm trying to relate!" Nova cries. "I thought it'd help since you're all--" 

Kaine is keenly aware of what he is 'all'; ribs collapsing inward, body cinching into two segments, organs migrating downwards.

"Screw you," he snarls. "There are like forty different fucking worlds here right now, and in none of them does all of your bullshit count as help." 

Nova frowns in the shadow of the helmet, but Kaine's shaky insults still aren't enough to chase him away. 

Kaine sighs when he has enough breath to do so. "Ah-- aren't you supposed to be in space?"

"Space is crazy right now, too," Sam mutters. His attention diverts to another barrage of detonations, a low set of thuds while part of the cityscape begins to break up around distant flying figures. "Why are all these people showing up?"

"How the hell would I know?" he says in a watery wheeze, rolling onto his back. Sam's touch returns, but he doesn't sense it the same way he feels hands on skin. His hand is heavy and loud. Touches seem so loud now. Nova is reaching for every part of him where his human form is slipping away and Kaine shrinks from it, hoping his face is monstrous enough not to look scared.

"Cut it out!" he chokes, and the only thing Sam has stopped doing is apologizing. 

"Somebody said it's the end of the world." Nova's words barely eke past the collisions in the distance. Yeah, Kaine nods weakly. He heard that, too. Now fucking go. "And we gotta make sure the team makes it out."

"So go find them," he shoots back, but his voice is weak and no longer his own. His whole body is changing, mournfully and without pain. Insects and spiders don't feel pain because it's just an emotional response to physical stimuli. They feel pressure and warmth, they understand safety and danger without confusing it with emotion.

Synapses fire in his rapidly deteriorating brain, stretching out for a response to Nova's fingers on his skin, trying to hold him together. 

"Yeah, in a second," Nova murmurs.

The universes are compressing in on each other, and it amplifies the tightness in his chest. Kaine tries to plunge his hands inside and ease out the parts of his body that are scrambling to push free, pulsing against his broken bones. His joints have bent backwards, divided. 

Suddenly there's a hand at his sternum, like the brat knows, easing his own grip away to rest at the frayed symbol that decorates it. 

"Gotta wait until you go back to normal," Sam says. Kaine can feel his own jaw expanding with too-large mandibles between his human teeth, wondering if it's a smile. There's never going to be a normal for him, Sam should get out quick. He doesn't, his hands are over Kaine like he's trying to hold him together, or maybe just down.

"I said I was cool about that spider before, right? Under the sink?" Kaine's not sure who he's trying to reassure.

"Yeah," he gasps, curls inward. His remaining bones grind together, they have no give to them. With the sharpest turn and they splinter. His face is splitting. But his chest feels secure. Nova's hands sound safe. An emotional response.

"I need you to ride this out, buddy," says Nova, and it's wrong, dirty like when Peter calls him brother, and if he had a throat left he would have gagged. He can sense the vibrations of the kid's heartbeat through his fingertips. 

He drifts in and out of consciousness, so sure each time he comes to it will be in front of a half webbed, partially digested space suit. But it's always that dumb helmet tossing the glare of the fires in his eyes, and Sam describing some macro image with Huntsmen spiders.

Bullets crackle in the space beside them, narrowly, and Kaine jerks back on reflex. The sting in in his arm- a human arm- signifies it's still very much broken.

"Welcome back," Nova says and lifts several metres into the air. "Now let's go save the world!"

  


* * *

  


There are parts of the all-new, all-different universe that Kaine understands; a bunch of idiot people doing dumbass things, insufferably righteous good guys. And the other things he doesn't; why the price of beer got marked up, Gwen Stacy in a spidersuit. Somewhere in between his area of understanding is why Nova was the only thing between him and a return of the Other that night. He tries not to remember it, the heaviness of the hand on his chest. His pulse eliciting a clear emotional response that should've been drowned out by arachnid impulses. You just feel things differently when your entire ribcage isn't buckling in on itself, that's all it is, he thinks, then mostly dismisses it.

Ben survives- obviously, nothing holds him back- and invites Kaine to join the Web Warriors or some shit. But Kaine doesn't need another Warrior-motif superhero team when most of the old one is still dead or missing, although Justice always had a habit of popping up at the last possible second, and everyone knows Robbie Baldwin is as unkillable as a cockroach. 

Nova came through alongside Kaine, and returned to him after checking on his own family. Those are two more things Kaine's not sure he understands. 

"We'll find her," Nova keeps saying, grinning against a new sky. "Hummingbird can't have flown far."

A lot of people had disappeared when the worlds crashed together, the missing persons columns are half the newspaper long. ("Who reads a newspaper?" Sam peeks over his phone. "You're such an old man.") Despite all the press about the importance of those postings, Kaine doesn't officially report Aracely missing- what's he supposed to write? _LOST: one mind-reading pain in my ass. Powers include fear suggestion and chewing too loud. If found, tell her she's better off without me._ We'll find her, Nova says, over and over.

They haven't. One of them suggests heading back to Texas, Kaine can't remember who through his overpriced three beer fog. Nova could fly them everywhere, but that's too embarrassing. No buildings to web through, so they drive between cities. At a rest stop when Kaine shoves money at him for food, Sam buys four all-different, all-hideous types of sunglasses. His laugh is high and irritating in their confined space and Kaine misses Aracely so much he wants to pull over and punch a cactus. Nova kicks his feet up on the dash and sings off-tune with the radio, so Kaine abandons him at the next rest stop and hitches a ride atop an 18-wheeler. It buys himself an hour of silence before Nova catches up, overshoots the landing and crashes into the dusty landscape.

They stop in Odessa to steal another car ("Borrow, dude! We're borrowing it! Come on, you know Captain America will get on me if you don't bring it back.") and Kaine reluctantly patrols to avoid thinking about the latest failed round of this pointless hide and seek. He knocks out a mugger's teeth and doesn't care if it was some basic gang initiation, some a punk younger than Aracely. 

"You okay?" Sam asks.

"Fuck off," Kaine growls, but it cools, stays human.

Sam scowls at the blood on Kaine's suit like its the problem, and says yeah, he's getting a little frustrated too. But--

"If you say 'we'll find her' again, I will break your face," Kaine snaps. 

He can put his thumb on it, the ache under his own pulse where it waits. As angry as Kaine's been without her, it has stayed down since that night with Nova in the dirt. That night with the kid mumbling vague spider facts and pushing his knuckles into Scarlet Spider's near bursting chest. It was a weird memory. He didn't dismiss it. He thinks about it more than he likes.

"We will," Nova promises, and he doesn't get a matching set of black eyes because he looks so guilty everytime he darts back to Arizona, always double checking he's still one of the luckier ones. "We're gonna find all of them."

Instead, superhero work finds him, like it always does, like he’s got some kind of spider pheromone to crime. Nova stays late after one particularly epic shakedown, waiting for the nightly news to report on the foiled bank robbery. Kaine glowers at the enthusiasm, clutching his ribs through his unwelcomed nostalgia. Sam kicks his feet against the hotel mattress, staring at the television, face too close to the screen. Kaine angles his body away as much as he can without falling off the bed- isn't it time for you to head back to Arizona? Nope! He wants to see what they'll call Nova in Spanish.

"It's just Nova," he bites back a laugh when the idiot actually looks disappointed. "'No go'? You speak-- What the hell were you expecting?" His ribs groan in protest when he laughs. Sam shoots him a sulky look and turns the television volume up until the hooker next door angrily bangs on the wall. 

When Sam leaves he tries to tug the bedding over Kaine, a sneering nursemaid, but stops.

"These blankets are crunchy," he mutters and washes his hands before he touches his helmet, soars off.

Kaine glares at a water spot on the ceiling and thinks about Sam's hands, his crooked teeth. His body bouncing on the mattress. He thinks about how the world is still ending three months after that night in the dirt. He rubs a spot on his chest that's burnt and loud.

Another day, warm in the sun, Sam falls asleep with his head lolling against the passenger window. From that angle Kaine can see the slow echo of a pulse in his veins. He remembers it in the spot over his ribcage, its frenetic pace beside the destruction around them. Now Nova's heartbeat is easy and quiet. Safe. Kaine hurriedly turns the AC up all the way. Sam mutters irritably, shifts in his sleep while sweat drips down Kaine's back.

Nova sleepily watches him when he eventually wakes up, skin prickling in the artificial cold. 

"You okay?" he asks, tone heavy. He's been asking that a lot.

"Shut up." Kaine drags his nails into the steering wheel and gives himself a headache from staring at the horizon. Whatever else he's thinking about Sam makes him momentarily glad Aracely is gone. 

Maybe that's what summons her, or its the stink of fear he carries with him. But the following afternoon Aracely slides her tiny hand in his outside of San Antonio.

"Where the fuck have you been," he screams. "Why didn't you find me?" Like there was any way she could. 

Sam grins like a maniac and takes off, says he'll give them space. Kaine isn't sure what he needs space for, he can shout at her in front of alarmed travellers with or without Nova. He's starting to resent Arizona.

"You and Nova are getting along," she says when Kaine has finished yelling. She looks at his face a little too long. "He likes you a lot more now." Aracely reaches for him, fingers brushing the front of his shirt like a rake of claws. 

"He doesn't," Kaine argues, shrugging her away. Eventually he lets her sit shoulder to shoulder with him as he glares past the crowds milling through this halfway stop. She cards a hand through his hair and shifts through his thoughts just as easily. He doesn't know that’s what she’s doing for sure, but he suspects it from Aracely’s prolonged silence.

"You too," she adds after a while and refuses to clarify. 

Kaine watches the girl out of the corner of his eye. She looks right, but some missing persons came through different. Same name, same face but a wrong version for the people who were looking for them. He hasn't decided if the correct version of Aracely found him- or even if he has room to be picky. He's not the spider most people are looking for, why expect this Aracely to be one he wanted?

"It's all right," she says quietly, taking his hand. Kaine isn't sure which thought she's reading. 

"This is great, right?" Nova crows when he returns. He stretches with one arm over his head, helmet tucked under the other and drops to the curb beside Kaine. Aracely is back in the hotel, sleeping (another reason Kaine's not sure she's their version, but definitely not going to complain about that change.) 

"One down, six to go." Sam says and catches his confused look. "New Warriors. We're gonna find the rest of the team."

"Says who?"

"um, says you? What do you think? I bet Mark would probably have gone looking for his family, so maybe we head up to New York?"

Kaine runs a hand over his face. "No."

"No, what?" Sam glances to him, barrels on, "Do you think Doctor Pym has a school in this world yet? They might know about Vance."

"You really thought about this," Kaine mutters, face grim.

"Well yeah. We had a deal." Nova grins under the too hot sun. "We were gonna find the team. Just cause the world ended doesn't mean we ditch them. I mean, we found Aracely."

"Aracely found us," Kaine corrects, tries not to add a qualifier about which Aracely that might have been. "If Vance wants to get the band back together, let him do it." He cuts off Sam's argument, jerks his chin to the boy. "Since when do you give a shit about the New Warriors? You were part-time at best." It stings, but Kaine's already thought it through. If Nova sticks around, Aracely- whichever one they found- will find out, if she doesn't know already. 

Sam's pulled back, standing in front of Kaine. "What is your friggin problem! Don't you miss them?"

"No." Kaine presses the heel of his hands into the hollow of his eyes. "New Warriors are dead, stop trying to force it."

"I'm not forcing anything!" Sam cries, looking for someone to parrot back what he'd told Kaine, that they will find them. Kaine sits still; he wasn't made with sympathy. "You, me, Aracely! We're still around! It still works."

"Nothing about this works," he growls, looking Nova up and down with suspicion. "Is that why you're here? You wanted us to go on some grand rescue mission for people I barely know-"

"That's not why I'm here, don't be stupid," he says sharply, quietly, and Kaine sees a white flash of panic at the idea that Aracely may not be the only one who knows things. "We said we were going to find the team," he adds. "Back before this stuff."

"I don't remember that." Kaine takes a long, deep breath in relief, unsure when he stopped breathing.

"That's cause you were all hopped out on spider craziness. You _need_ me." A line runs through Kaine's shoulders, a weight over him. Sam rails on, encouraged, "How pissed were you about losing Aracely, but you didn't go over. That was me." He can't decide what stings worse- the wild victory in Sam's tone or his own disgusting concession. It can't be that simple. What happened in Loomworld wasn't going to make him change more frequently, or die quicker, no matter what everyone around him was saying. He can't need someone else to prevent it, and even if he did, he can't need someone who's standing way too close.

"I don't," he says, head pounding.

"You do. You do and you want me to stay." Nova is getting louder, he doesn't need to feel him in his chest to know that. 

"What are you, the fucking mind reader now?" he snarls. Kaine doesn't have Spider-sense but he's not sure it would've worked with how quick Nova can move, even without the suit. It doesn't matter. If Nova wants to punch him, he doesn't need to stand so close. Sam is crouched over him, Kaine's collar in his fist. "I don't," he says again, but Sam surges forward and kisses him.

It's fucking hot as hell in Texas. He doesn't know whose dumbass idea it had been to come back.

"This works," Sam says, presses his thumbs into Kaine's shoulders and kneeling over him. Kaine's thought process seems slow, like maybe he imagined the lips on his, the closeness of Nova now. "We work. I bet it could even work better if," Sam breaks off. He doesn't have the guts to finish that train of thought, or maybe he just lacks the vocabulary.

Sam seems to discard that thought and kisses him again, lapping up Kaine's hitched breath, whole body thrilled against him.

It's not real, a distant thought reasons. He's been drugged or it's some particularly sick Skrull or whatever depraved nightmare this all-new all-shit universe had cooked up to torment him with. That's the only thing that can explain Nova squirming in his lap, Kaine letting him. 

If that's the case, then whatever he does, it won't be Kaine's fault. His hands are inching around Nova's waist, coaxing him forward-- 

The difference in their sizes sends Sam sprawling on the pavement when Kaine snaps away, stands up quick.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Kaine says in a voice he doesn't recognize. It's not his or Peter's or Ben's, or even the Other's. His insides churn with dread and something lower. 

Sam stumbles back to his feet, cradling his arm, and everything storming inside of Kaine crashes to a halt. Of course you hurt him, he's a goddamn _child_ without the Nova powers. More space bullshit that's never convenient when you wanna brutalize a kid, right? The dull ache in his chest is gone, and before it was a pleasant, warm pressure, a reminder. Now it's gnawing up inside him, like from the before times, when one was its own whole entity in a fractured universe of others. Nova _had_ held it back that night. A better person would compartmentalize what it meant to have somebody rescue you, to have them hold you together and sit with you when you broke apart. They wouldn't attach the wrong feelings to it, wouldn't think of Sam's hands placing pressure lower, palms spread flat over his chest while the rest of his body worked.

Yeah, well. When has he ever been the better clone?

Kaine takes several steps back, hands up, chest heaving. That's why Sam has to go. Nova is just another person who wanted to help you, who could help you, but you're too fucked up to accept it without conditions. 

He's been holding you back just being here, another thought hisses from somewhere comfortable and dark. You let him leash you up and you don't get anything out of it? He's offering, why not just take it?

"I thought," Nova starts, voice cracking to remind Kaine what a whole new monster he's become. Sam picks up on Kaine's repulsed expression and his own face goes through several emotions that hit Scarlet Spider in the gut. He struggles to his feet, shoving his hair down over his face a few too many times to actually look convincing. "Whatever. You're a jerk."

"No shit." Kaine says. "Find the New Warriors, whatever. Keep me the hell out of it." If Nova comes at him now, Kaine strongly suspects it will be to punch him for real this time. He doesn't.

Kaine spends two hours outside the hotel room, trying to school his thoughts quiet, or at least shut out the memory of the noises Sam made around his tongue. 

  


* * *

  


"I'm gonna fucking _kill_ Stark," Kaine hisses. 

Checking there aren't any idiot bystanders on the streets this late, Kaine removes the glass from the frame with a few swift kicks ("Cool!") and yanks the hovering hero inside. Sam wobbles on his feet momentarily, dazed from the force where he struck the side of the building ("I was aiming for the window," he slurs defensively.) 

"You're drunk," Kaine says, as if a superspace suited teenager shouting outside his hotel wasn't announcement enough. "Iron Man lets you kids- I thought he wasn't drinking anymore."

"Different Tony," Sam says, glassy eyed. "This one's more fun."

There is no single shred of him that is happy to see Nova again. Aracely kept Kaine updated about the new Avenger team (there's always a new Avenger team) and he pointedly gave zero shits about seeing Nova zipping alongside some different Spider. Good, he's more age appropriate. Good, that's none of his business. Good, think about something else when you are sharing living quarters with a fucking psychic. 

Aracely had pat his hand sympathetically. "Yep. I miss Nova too."

"Fun? I hope Thor hammers off his dick," Kaine snarls and tugs Sam's helmet off. The suit hurriedly flickers and fades back into his street clothes. He can see Nova's unfocused deep blue eyes and reconsiders taking the helmet off. "Christ. Sit down, you probably have a concussion."

"I always have a concussion," Sam counters with a slow, smug smile. The clone eases him into a seat at the edge of the bed.

"Yeah, that's not surprising," he says, holding Sam’s head steady with a hand under his chin. He's staring at Sam's face for a few seconds before he realizes he has no real medical knowledge to diagnose a concussion, let alone treat one, when Sam reaches out and presses his palms to Kaine's legs. 

"So like," Sam begins thickly, fingers needling against his upper thighs. "You're not supposed to sleep when you have a concussion." Kaine is not 100% sure that's medically accurate. He figures it wouldn't hurt to check up on that, like to leave and ask someone else in the hotel or find a computer to google it or just jump out the broken window.

He fucking knew this would happen. He knew it the second he heard the sonic boom that accompanies this brat showing up and ruining what sliver of their all-new all-different world Kaine was able to carve for himself. A couple states had been enough distance before, with a new team for one and a new Houston for himself. But of course Nova can't let anything die- not the shitty old team, not thinking he could do anything for Kaine, and not the tiny corner of Kaine's brain that would let him.

"Get your hands off me," he says, pulling back, blood hot.

"Ooh, Spider-man, I'm really scared," Nova snickers. His legs are numb, like the punk's grip cut off his circulation. Worse, it's made everything coursing through his veins seem to pool somewhere else, slightly higher. 

Sam continues, tongue stumbling over his words (do NOT think about his tongue, soft and pink-) "I was kinda thinking you could keep me awake." Then, in a low conspiratory whisper, "I'm not actually scared." He leans down to unlace his shoes- nope, not unlace. They're velcro, because Kaine wasn't already enough of an animal, so whatever living hell that brought him to life also gave him a kid trying to be sexy while he's taking off goddamn velcro shoes.

The equilibrium shift from leaning over is too much for either the head trauma or the wine cooler buzz, and Sam lies back against the bed with a thud and a laugh. 

Aracely is in the next room and a light sleeper, so Kaine has to keep his thoughts steady. He can't start screaming or hitting the walls or punch Nova so hard his drunk ass will be Neptune's problem. These are all the things Kaine wants to do, but they're not the worst. 

Hummingbird hasn't asked, but she was different after Sam left, soft and careful. When they got back to Houston, Kaine threw himself into patrol. He missed her, but running away from his problems was always the sweeter option. He swung through the city until he got heatstroke, sprawled on the Shell One rooftop, blinking sun spots out of his eyes. He stared straight at the cloudless sky and felt the weight of Sam's hands over him again, but different. _She knows, she thinks you're disgusting, or worse; she wants it for herself,_ and Kaine didn't stop any more robberies or car accidents in Houston that day.

Aracely was back to her normal chatty self by the time Kaine returned to the hotel. She sat behind him on the couch, dutifully trying to dab aloe vera on the sunburn over his scalp and saying it wouldn't get in his hair (it did).

I can't lose her again, he thinks now, louder but hoping she won't start awake. I can't have her be afraid of me for this.

"Get up," he hisses, catching Sam by the arm and yanking him back to a sitting position, hard. "We're not doing that."

"Doing what?" Nova taunts, pitching forward with his hands scrabbling against Kaine. "Are you still mad cause we kissed?"

"And other things," Kaine says, trying to untangle those grabby hands before they get anywhere dangerous.

"You wanna do other things??" Sam shouts and Kaine hates how loud he always has to be, or how the stupid hands over him remind him of lying in the dirt at the end of the world. He should've left him to rot, or run Nova through the back of his skull and scurried away into obscurity. That kind of thought sticks with him when he remembers Sam's palms over his skin, this need to slam something into the back of his throat, although maybe not as murderous as he originally intended.

"No," he says through clenched teeth, although pushing Sam backwards on the bed doesn't support the refusal very well. "Shut up and don't sleep." He knows how lame the second part sounds, even to a boozed up punk. "Your concussion," Kaine reminds him, settling into the bed himself and something inside his chest turns at the thrill that crosses over Nova's face.

"You're gonna keep me awake." He's practically humming with excitement. "In bed."

Kaine's never found much use in self-discipline, but he knows there has got to be something people say to themselves in these scenarios. Nothing in his life has ever been unique, so there has to have been other superheroes (he's not a superhero, fine, super _things_ ) who've faced a lapful of over eager teen heroes. There must be some kind of mantra, some method that keeps them from dropping even lower and sicker than everything else Kaine has done.

Yeah, probably, but asking a superhero for help sounds even more disgusting than what he wants to do to Nova. 

"All right," he manages, glaring down the flushed smile that will haunt him worse than any grisly death. "I'll keep you up." At the very last second, Kaine decides against cold clocking Sam (because the last guy he punched needed a defibrillator) and just pinches a patch of bare skin on the brat's arm.

"Ow!" Nova cries, frowns, looks like he's trying to decide if this could possibly be the type of pinching that adults think is sexy. Kaine repeats the action maliciously. "Ow! Ow! Cut it out!"

"Don't go to sleep." Kaine orders with a look that promises to do worse if Sam even tries closing his eyes too long. For the next hour, Kaine struggles to keep the hyperactive superpunk down. He pulls something in his neck pulling Nova off him and leaves eight separate bruises he later realizes will not look so chaste in the morning.

"Don't be such a baby!" Sam hisses eventually, with watery eyes from too much arm pinching. "You know a WAY better way to keep somebody awake, _Kaine_." The way Nova curls his name around his teeth makes the spider turn on his side, angled as far away as possible. Every attempt to move closer meets Sam with a sharp kick to his knees, and any silence that stretches on too long means Kaine has to hurry and kick him again, keep him awake. 

Close to daybreak Kaine knows he's on the verge of hysterical sleep deprived laughter, but he has to be quiet. Sam is past whining and bargaining and bold begging for nothing he's actually ready for- He's moved onto repeating the Scarlet Spider's name, over and over. Sam tangles himself under the sheets but remains reluctantly at the most distant point of the bed, stubbornly spitting _Kaine, Kaine, Kaine._ He could laugh, but he wants to hear it, how many times Sam's said it. Has to be close to a hundred by now. There's another sound, wet and slick and even if Nova's overdue for another kick, Kaine stays stock still, listening and attempting to feel horrified instead of something else. 

Kaine gnaws at the inside of his mouth, sliding a hand between his own legs.

Several years later, around nine, Sam speaks up with a runny, "Maybe I need to drink more wat-" and violently pukes onto the comforter. Kaine is a little too proud of himself until he climbs into the longest, coldest shower of his life.

Aracely is waiting when he walks into the living room.

"Room service brought breakfast," she chirps. "Do you think Sam can eat or is he still puking?" Kaine's own stomach must've dropped somewhere around the lobby. He can't keep his mind blank, he never could, another side effect from Peter. He desperately imagines bulbous spider nests full of rotting bugs. Aracely doesn't flinch, shooting him a reprimanding look over her orange juice. "C'mon, of course I was awake. He was screaming about being drunk and you kicked out a window."

Kaine cautiously eases into a seat at the table. "That's all you heard?" 

"Mm hmm," she lies, heaping syrup onto her waffles. He swats her hand away from adding half the sugar bowl to her eggs. 

  


* * *

  


"I told you to stay out of Houston."

Sam casts him a sympathetic look from across the rooftop. "Dude, you told yourself to stay out of Houston and still wound up back here. Not even you listens to you." 

Kaine stays exactly where he is, eyes locked on the kid he last saw ralphing over an expensive blanket before splitting through the broken window. He considered forwarding the hotel's cleaning bill to Arizona, but it's not like protecting the galaxy comes with a wage, right? Kaine had lingered over the invoice, the idea that maybe there's some kind of junior Avengers allowance program he could tap into. What's Sam need the money for anyway? He still lives with his parents. Kaine felt his insides go cold and shoved the bill to the bottom of a drawer. A different hotel has a crisis in Midtown and they take advantage of its manager's good will and relocate without settling their earlier expenses. 

He tries not to think about Nova peering through the newly repaired windows of the old hotel, how many times he might've dropped by the city before spotting the Scarlet Spider on patrol that night. 

"Don't you have a new team to be drinking with?" 

Sam's hands go to his stomach and Kaine smirks under his mask. Maybe Iron Man had the right idea letting an underaged idiot get plastered. He immediately retracts that thought, erases it from every corner of his mind, and mentally threatens death and disfigurement to any mind-readers in the area who may have heard that (Aracely withstanding, although it's past her bedtime.)

"Nah, just me," Nova replies. "Saw the floods on TV, wanted to make sure you guys were okay." The water still swirls at hurricane levels, but the danger passed hours ago. Leave it to an Avenger to show up late with faux concern. And leave it to Nova to show up late with too much. 

"The only danger we're in is if Aracely gets hepatitis from swimming in it," Kaine shrugs. Sam laughs weakly, the laugh of someone who's not entirely sure what hepatitis is (an STD?), before going silent. 

It's late enough most of the criminals have called it in, and downtown still being ankle deep in sewage prevents even the biggest opportunists from getting into too much trouble. Kaine squints at ruined shop fronts and drowned out cars, and tries to think about how superheroes get really intense about their cities. That there's something he's supposed to know, looking over a slow hail of destruction on a place he agreed to protect. 

Instead he just feels Nova staring at the back of his head.

"You okay?" Sam starts to ask, and Kaine snaps, "Fine," because it's mostly true. Aracely is back or some kind of her is, they're in a place that's marginally familiar if not waterlogged. They'll head across the border when the issue with mutants and drug lords in Reynosa gets settled. Everything about the situation is fine, except for the literal holes the kid's drilling into the base of his skull.

"So, actually you can sleep with a concussion," Sam says as if it's a secret.

"I don't care," he mutters, suddenly exhausted. He's not sure if this non sequitur is better or worse than Nova apologizing for what happened at the hotel. Or which of them should be apologizing.

"Apparently people used to think you couldn't because there's this thing where you can be like. like, your brain can start swelling." Nova begins, and Kaine drags a hand over the face of his mask. First brainless spider anecdotes and now he wants to teach him about head trauma? At least only one of those things is something Nova knows about intimately.

"And you'll be awake and fine and then, like, pass out and die. But a concussion-"

"-is your fucking problem, not mine," spits Kaine."When I said stay out of Houston it's because I didn't want to deal with your idiot garbage anymore." The other hero steps back, gnawing at his bottom lip, forcing his wounded look into a sulk. Kaine hurriedly directs his attention from Sam's mouth. "Flood's over, get lost."

"I'm trying to be nice." Nova's hurt tones cut like a razor. Good, he thinks, but it isn't and it tugs him down.

Kaine's face is set and hard. "I don't want you to be nice." 

"What _do_ you want?" Sam asks and he shudders. You, pinned to the floor. You, twisting against the wall and moaning. 

"I want you to leave me alone," he orders. But it doesn't sound true to him and it likely rings hollow to Sam too, probably has since the beginning. 

Nova brightens, is bolder, circling towards him.

"So… Remember when you kissed me?" 

"No," Kaine replies through grit teeth, which isn't a lie, he wasn't the one kissing anybody. Mostly. He wonders if he pitches himself into the bayou if he'll drown, or just get enough oxygen deprivation he never has to think about this conversation again.

"Yeah huh," Sam counters, zipping around to face him. Kaine wrings his gaze away, though the expression Nova wears is unfamiliar. "I was the one with brain damage, not you." 

"Brain damage," he repeats cautiously, then with waves of relief as strong as the floodwaters, "Oh." Sam's a heavily concussed teenager all hopped up on adrenaline and hormones. Everything that’s happened, brain damage explains it, sanitizes it, wraps it in a neat package in the corner of his mind where Kaine definitely never thinks about it on humid nights. 

"That something else you learned about concussions?" he grins tightly. "It makes you do dumbass things?"

"Maybe," Sam says. "What's your excuse?" Sure, brain damage is a good explanation for why Nova pawed at him during their last few unfortunate encounters, but it doesn't wave away Kaine's reactions.

Kaine casts a look over the edge of the building, but the movement is just debris bobbing in the water. "I'm not the one who got drunk and crashed into the side of the Hilton."

"Yeah, you're the guy that jerked it next to me in bed." Blood pounds in his ears. He doesn't see the water anymore.

"That didn't happen." He hopes his voice sounds dangerous, reminds Nova of the absolute damage Kaine can do to his face when he stops holding back. It doesn't. He doesn't.

"I bet it happened before too." Sam's own voice is pinched in excitement. "It's cool, I'm okay with it--"

"Shut the fuck up." Kaine's hands form tight fists. There's more the one wrong thing to do with kids. Nova rails on, like he doesn't hear the clone at all,

"It's cool," he repeats, and then says, worse, "I was doing it too." 

It's too fucking hot in Houston, why the hell did he go back? It's like when he was gassed on the Chase building, struggling for clear air through the suit. Kaine turns to lock eyes furiously with the spot in Nova's visors where his should be. He probably looks happy with himself under all that space junk. 

"You heard it." Sam glides towards him. A low, shuddering cold has started to seep from Kaine's stomach to the rest of his body.

"Nova," he starts, warningly. He hasn't decided what he'll do; there's a whole gambit of options, from clawing out Sam's throat, to prying off his suit one panel at a time and biting every spot underneath. Kaine pulls his mask off, chest still tight. On cue, Sam surges forward and the hands on him are real, not the desperate thoughts he's stifled until Aracely is a safe distance away. These are real and the only threat beneath his fingertips now is how much Kaine might actually like it.

"Hey," Kaine hisses but feeling has draining out of his limbs, he can't shove him away.

"Nope, not this time," Sam smirks and taps his helmet with a free hand, like the Nova powers are the real reason why the spider's locked in place. "I'm like, way stronger than you with this on."

"Sure, and not roofied by Stark." He sounds strangled, and Nova laughs at him with a vice grip.

"Yeah," he says and the low, sure tone of it goes right to Kaine's lap. "Not this time." He moves so quick the helmet clips Kaine's forehead when they kiss. Sure, he thinks, arms bolted to his sides. They can share some head trauma. 

Sam keens against him, mouth open and pressing into his. 

Maybe this would be easier if Sam had acted like a kid, tried to be a little more vulnerable about it, not that anything Nova ever does is ever particularly mature. But at least then maybe Kaine's resolve would've held, he could've looked the scared kid in the eye and called him out. You're not ready, you don't know what it is you want. Whatever those asshole Avengers think you're old enough to do; this isn't one of them. All he needed was a little hesitation, some inexperienced fumble. Instead he got a a junior superhero who fucking planned out an attack, considered the power balance between them and maliciously turned Kaine's old mistakes against him.

Kaine thinks if he got any harder, he'd pass out.

His armor still has traces of the cold on it, like Sam ducked through space as a shortcut between states. The feel of it is stiff and uncomfortable to his thigh, but Kaine's remaining shreds of dignity appreciate the barrier. Also, it's still 85 fucking degrees at two in the morning, so he'll take a little bit of the cold where he can get it. 

Sam pulls his lips away but they're still attached below. "If I take the helmet off, do you promise not to throw me off the building?" he breathes.

"No," Kaine says, keeps saying. Nova's grin looks like he'll take his chances.

"Okay, so like. Don't shove me again either, cause you really messed up my arm last time," he warns, fingers along the bottom of the helmet.

"Don't say that." Nova makes a vague sympathetic sound at the plea and takes the helmet off, the suit soon following. From their closeness it's like a prolonged static shock, the crackle of the limited air between them before it pops out of existence.

"No, it's cool, it's better now," Sam murmurs and without the barrier of the suit, practically topples into the other man, body flush to Kaine's and decidedly much less dressed. "Way better."

Scarlet Spider tugs his face from the kiss, jarred by the wardrobe change. "Christ, are you wearing pajamas?" Nova glowers.

"They're my boxers and _you're_ wearing spandex," he argues back reflexively. Kaine glances over him, the dirty tank and shorts, thumb hooked against Sam's hipbone. The position seemed less offensive when it was a over a spacesuit, now he can feel every bone under the thin fabric, the smoothness of his skin through non-thermal coverings. He can feel these things, and more, even if his hands went numb ages ago, operating through someone else. 

"I was gonna go to bed, but then I saw the flood pictures, so." Sam scrunches his mouth thoughtfully. "I was thinking about you." It's like Kaine's struggling through the floodwaters all over again, trying to keep his head above the current. It's too sweet and genuine and his body recoils from kindness more than anything else.

_I think about you too_ is a better person's response, or maybe to just gently extract the teen and send him packing. Those guys that are better than him are probably more used to tender moments, so Kaine shoves his hand up the leg of Sam's shorts instead.

Sam yells in surprise, unraveling into a weak moan, legs twisting against Kaine's, the hand between them. Nova's looking right at him while he strokes the kid under his fingers. Kaine stares back at this hostage audience uneasily and Nova's eyes are dark and heavy. He's reminded of space- Sam should be in space. Chitauri or not, it's probably safer than this.

He draws his hand back (ignoring the desperate noise that follows) and spins Sam around, his back to Kaine's chest. Sam's nervous laugh echoes through his abdomen, fingers scrambling back for some piece of Kaine to hold onto. Kaine's back hits a wall, the door to the stairwell.

"Hey, cut it out," Sam squirms. "Weird spider gloves- that's not fair, you jerk. I'm not into that-!" Again, a better person would stop there. Instead, Kaine lets him ease free, remove his glove. "Whoa, I thought it was like all connected," Sam begins and then arches back as Kaine wraps his fingers around him. He whimpers into the crook between Kaine's shoulder and collarbone, hips stuttering. There were better ways to do this, but the situation wasn't built for comfort; it's a roof, he hadn't planned for it, and Kaine's pretty committed to the whole 'not a better person' schtick at this point. 

Sam grinds his ass back into Kaine, like he has any idea what that does. Or maybe he knows, the brat's always known and Kaine is mentally rewriting every previous encounter to end with him bent over and groaning. _Maybe next time_ , says a thought somewhere cold and vile. He shudders and Sam is coiling, coming apart under his fingers. His breathing slows, stills against Kaine long enough that cold shame barrels towards them. 

He wipes his hand on his own leg, stumbling over the vowels of an apology before Sam is moving again. He turns around and kisses him, fingers tight along Kaine's jaw.

"That was cool," he says between bites. Kaine flinches away from him, the dampness between them. Nova follows, digs his hands into the suit, with a bleary-eyed stare into Kaine's face like he wants to rip open the uniform, ride him with the suit still on. Sure, that makes sense. It's bad enough he's a kid you just messed up for life, now he doesn't even want to fuck you, he just wants the suit.

"Kaine," he whines against his neck, fingers burning through the fabric.

"Fuck," he gasps as he arches slowly, the laugh hot on his skin. "Get it off." Okay, okay, Sam says, confused how the suit operates but catching on fast, sliding his hands over Kaine's.

"I got it, chill out," Nova says and he burns all over, differently. He settles his hands along Sam's back as Nova peels the suit away, his fingernails too short to leave much damage in their wake. He remembers this from Annabelle, but it had been different. It wasn't ever okay, but something like that was better, right? Sam yanks the suit to his thighs, hungrily staring after Kaine like he's trying to decide if he wants to bend down or climb up.

"Kid, don't-"

"Stop calling me kid," he orders, glare less convincing when his hands are shaking. He kneels down.

"Fine, _Sam_ ," he pants, entire body twisting under his mouth. "Don't. Don't-- Hey! Teeth!" In a grimacing moment of clarity, he hauls back. Sam doesn't go far, all bones and flushed skin under Kaine's hands and watching, waiting for instructions.

"Sorry," he whispers, the first thing that sounds halfway honest out of him. Kaine expected him to say it was payback for the gloves earlier. Sam just waits. He's going to hurt his knees like that. 

"You need to," Kaine starts and stops. He pulls his arm away, drags it over his forehead. He doesn't know how he's still sweating when his whole body feels like it's freezing. 

"It's okay," Sam says with lips that already looked bruised. "Tell me what to do."

Put your suit back on. Go home. Call the cops. Get your dad to come to Texas and punch my teeth in. Never come back here. Don't tell Aracely. Or Captain America. Fuck it, fine, tell the Avengers, but maybe don't tell your parents. Don't think about me anymore and I'll try and do the same. Go back to the old shitty world and make it so you never put your hands on me. Grow up. Grow up and realize you could do a lot better than me.

Kaine doesn't say any of this. He's thrown away all pretense of being that better person. He came out of the vat of genetic material already flawed, what's the point?

"Just," he stops again, takes a few steadying breaths. "Watch the teeth, would you?" Nova's wicked grin is all teeth, over-eager nods. The wall's jagged edges dig into Kaine's back as he skids against it, pressing to it when Sam's mouth returns. 

He's not great at it, but why should he be? There's only so much Nova would've learned from porn- if he's even old enough to watch that shit. Kaine doesn't exactly have a typical teenage past to compare to Sam's. Feeling sorry for himself about a missed youth gets lost when Nova moves on from sucking the head of his cock, taking more into his mouth. Kaine tries to bolt his hips back against the wall to keep from bucking into his throat. He is way too young to be watching that kind of porn.

Kaine busies himself staring at the bricks on another wall, instead of Sam's eyes that are looking up him for confirmation. That, at least, he can avoid. Unlike the pad of his tongue against him, or the thumb pressing into his thigh. He dimly wonders if it will leave a bruise. His hips snap on reflex. Sam gives a muffled yelp, then moans. He's good at that.

His fingers twitch at his side and the idea to cup his hand over Sam's cheek dawns on him, foggy and stilted. There's plenty of things wrong with that idea; you've touched him enough, it's encouraging him, you can't touch anything with those hands after what you did. Or maybe he could just grab him by the back of his head and fuck his mouth. Sure, that would be bad but it wasn't like anything else Kaine has done tonight has been any better.

He chances a glance to Nova, who's still fucking staring like a lunatic. He gulps and the attentive brat mirrors the action. Kaine scrapes his knuckles against the wall, and somewhere between a groan and a growl hurriedly catches Nova by the back of his neck. He freezes- Kaine's claws at the base of his skull are sharp. Flushed and heady, Sam murmurs in protest, and sputters when the vibration tips Kaine over.

Anchor heavy guilt descends on him, watching the kid slip away, pull faces, wipe his mouth on his arm. Kid, how many times did he think that, say it to Sam, and he still went through with this? A better person would've listened to those barriers he set up in his mind, in his limited understanding of morality. Fuck better people, what right does he have to think about Ben after what he's just done?

Kaine claws his way back into the suit.

"That was gross," Sam says between a cough, "The taste, uh. Not you. You were-- Hey!" As soon as he's clothed, Kaine takes a running leap over the side of the building, webs in one hand, mask in the other. He has a half a second's head start before he hears the Nova suit rocket over the edge. He snakes between high rises, windows whipping past. He staggers to a stop over a parking garage, colliding into a parked car. The alarm shrieks. He ran out of buildings. Fucking Houston.

Sam lands behind him a few seconds later. He can't outrun someone with rocket powers. Kaine lashes out at the car beside them, silencing it. Nova approaches him slowly, like he's some wild animal, which isn't completely wrong. 

"I think that wasn't too bad," he says, with forced optimism. "I mean, you didn't throw me off the building." His smile is tense, his mouth looks redder than usual. Kaine manages something like a nod in response. 

For the millionth time, "You okay?"

"No," Kaine replies. He hasn't been okay for so long he's not sure he knows the feeling. 

Kaine leans against the car with a man spider sized dent, slowly sliding to the ground. Resting his face in his hands, he can hear Nova's slow approach. It's an embarrassing position, but not half as bad as the one they were in ten minutes ago. 

In the morning Aracely will know, she'll see what he sees. And he's never going to stop seeing Sam's lips around his cock, hollowed cheeks. He screwed two kids with one action. He is some base monster, the Other. So yeah, the opposite of okay. 

He exhales loudly. 

Sam opens his mouth and closes it, scuffs his boots against the ground. "Sorry," he says again, quietly. Helmet off, he eases into a seat beside him. Nova hesitates before he kisses Kaine, brief and closed mouthed, chaste if you can look past the salt over his lips. 

Sam leans back and stares up at sky and the stars- or what little they can see against the city. Kaine follows his stare. Nova talks about the distant lights like old haunts, and most of his stories end in telepathically talking animals or epic firefights. He tells enough tales Kaine isn't sure how many are real and which are just symptoms of an underlying brain condition. 

He leans his head on Kaine's shoulder. He wants to reach out and run his hands through Sam's hair, or maybe just run away again. He's too tired to decide between them for now, and asks, "Are you okay?"

Sam twists his neck to look at him, face pressed to the suit. "Sure," he answers easily. "I got you, buddy."


End file.
